This article attempts to address the concept of “public responsibility”, as well as the problem of relationships between branches of legal responsibility and responsibility in a negative and a positive sense, from the standpoint of the philosophy of law, including the dispute between nominalists and realists. In addition, the phenomenon of the direct action of constitutional principles of legal liability and the problem of “constitutionalization” of legislation on administrative offenses are analyzed on the basis of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation practice.